The themes evoke those of Philip Roth’s work in the ’70s—sex, divorce, guilt, Jewish identity—but the execution is lacking.
A portrait of the artist as an aging, solipsistic man.
Michael Goldberg’s career as a writer has brought him into the rag-tag offices of a Jewish activist group, the orbit of Hollywood moguls and the homes of mobsters, while various romances have bounced him from his native New York to Vancouver to L.A. and back to New York again. What all this movement hasn’t done is make him any more secure about his ability to maintain a stable relationship, or help him shake off the neuroses he feels his parents bestowed on him. This book is less a novel, as it is billed, than a loosely connected cycle of short stories. Evanier (Red Love, 1991, etc.) presents a variety of scenes from Goldberg’s life, all expressed in a similarly melancholic and nostalgic tone. In “The Man Who Gave Up Women,” his father’s death unlocks a stream of memories of his persistent insults; “The Great Kisser” tells much the same story in the context of his mother’s death; and in “Scraps,” he recalls his first girlfriend, when he was 14, as well as their accidental reunion more than two decades later. It is among the most effective tales here, rich with details that evoke a boy’s life in New York in the mid-’50s: stickball in Queens, the dying breaths of vaudeville on Broadway, radio and TV shows, a growing sexual awareness. Unfortunately, Evanier only rarely generates enough narrative energy to make these feel like full-bodied stories; more often, they’re episodic tales differentiated only by the varying levels of contempt that Michael expresses toward himself. That’s not a big problem in “Danny and Me,” a trim comic story about the shared romantic troubles that Michael has with a young autistic man he counsels; but in the sprawling, novella-length “The Tapes,” it’s deadly—an extended fit of bellyaching about exes and therapy that tries the reader’s patience.
The themes evoke those of Philip Roth’s work in the ’70s—sex, divorce, guilt, Jewish identity—but the execution is lacking.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2006
ISBN: 1-59975-339-1
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Rager Media
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose...
Sparks (The Longest Ride, 2013, etc.) serves up another heaping helping of sentimental Southern bodice-rippage.
Gone are the blondes of yore, but otherwise the Sparks-ian formula is the same: a decent fellow from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches falls in love with a decent girl from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches—and is still suffering the consequences. The guy is innately intelligent but too quick to throw a punch, the girl beautiful and scary smart. If you hold a fatalistic worldview, then you’ll know that a love between them can end only in tears. If you hold a Sparks-ian one, then true love will prevail, though not without a fight. Voilà: plug in the character names, and off the story goes. In this case, Colin Hancock is the misunderstood lad who’s decided to reform his hard-knuckle ways but just can’t keep himself from connecting fist to face from time to time. Maria Sanchez is the dedicated lawyer in harm’s way—and not just because her boss is a masher. Simple enough. All Colin has to do is punch the partner’s lights out: “The sexual harassment was bad enough, but Ken was a bully as well, and Colin knew from his own experience that people like that didn’t stop abusing their power unless someone made them. Or put the fear of God into them.” No? No, because bound up in Maria’s story, wrinkled with the doings of an equally comely sister, there’s a stalker and a closet full of skeletons. Add Colin’s back story, and there’s a perfect couple in need of constant therapy, as well as a menacing cop. Get Colin and Maria to smooching, and the plot thickens as the storylines entangle. Forget about love—can they survive the evil that awaits them out in the kudzu-choked woods?
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, stickily sweet but irresistible.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2061-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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